Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Thierry Zaboitzeff — Pagan Dances
(Bandcamp imdzabmusic0012, 2021, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2021-12-10

Pagan Dances Cover art

In the year or so since Professional Stranger, Dr. Zab has been very busy with this, his latest and certainly appropriately titled blast of angular and emotional contemporary music, sometimes electro-acoustic, sometimes modern classical, and sometimes ambient, all converging in one dark form or another. Usually with Zaboitzeff’s releases we get a little more information regarding what it was created for — usually a modern dance project or somesuch — but here little information is given, the music simply speaks for itself as it goes forward, though it does shift around with regularity, bits and pieces all fused together in an interesting and irregular start-stop sequences. There are two parts — the first (and main) part is the fifteen-minute instrumental piece “Pagan Dances” (okay, there are some mysterious voice samples in there), and then a shorter five-minute piece titled “La Legende de NaYma” that is more uniformly dark and creepy, where spoken word parts abound, a bit more subtle and subdued than the first piece. There you have it, ostensibly a single, fifteen minutes with a five-minute B-side. Zaboitzeff plays all of the instrumentation here, which includes bass guitar, electric cello, guitar, keyboards, sampler, electronic percussion, as well as virtual acoustic instruments (which seem to include strings, horns, and more), and is also responsible for the composition, recording, and mixing. The longer piece does sound like it could have been written for some choreographed project, although that is merely speculation on my part; while the piece is occasionally very reminiscent of Zab’s work with Art Zoyd circa Berlin, discerning listeners will definitely hear a bit more avant-garde electronica in the soundworld of Pagan Dances.

Filed under: New releases, 2021 releases

Related artist(s): Thierry Zaboitzeff

More info
http://thierryzaboitzeff.bandcamp.com/album/pagan-dances-ep

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.